


Choices

by trilliath



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Ending, Choices Matter, Gen, Hope, Not Giving Up, Shepard Using Her Brain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-06 18:55:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trilliath/pseuds/trilliath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is an alternate ending for "the last ten minutes" in which Shepard is, on the whole, much more Shepard-like.<br/>This story includes a logic-throwdown with the starchild and a Shepard who does not just give up with a "You'll never understand". She uses her grit, and her mind. </p><p>And then she goes all BAMF and stops the reapers and saves the day with determination and hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Take a breath

She stared at the glowing beam of green energy that flowed around a plasma-white network core. It reminded her of the central data hub on the Shadow Broker's base. 

So much of her life in the past few years had been made up of choices. Huge, world shattering choices. Tiny choices that became important. Important choices that became meaningless.

But really, when it came down to it, most of her choices had been about one thing.

Hope.

Did she make the decision that was short-sighted and risked nothing? Or did she choose the harder, less certain option; the one to believe that things would work out if she just had enough faith. Faith that people would come through, that she could survive it, that the future was perhaps, for the most part, unwritten.

And in her life, somehow, she had always known in the pit of her stomach, that there was hope. She'd made the hard decisions. And for the most part, her faith had been rewarded.

But now, the hardest choice of her life, she felt nothing. 

She turned her head to the right, to look at the arrayed circuitry pulsing with hot red power. The thing she had been searching for. The way to destroy the reapers. The enemy that had given her no quarter, murdered her people with no mercy. But there was a catch. She'd have to murder her friends. She'd have to destroy the fledgling friendships of the Geth and Quarian peoples. Her friend Legion's most sentient sacrifice would be for naught. All their work would be undone, and she knew somewhere in her soul that it would not be the end of the reapers and this cursed cycle, but merely an end to _these_ reapers and _this_ cycle.

She looked left. It seemed almost manufactured to suit her history of choices of hope. Maybe, just maybe she would be stronger than the catalyst thought, and she would survive. And if not… well. She would be sacrificing herself for those she loved. She could save her friends, her people. Their people. The cold blue of Samara's code, of honor and duty, of sacrifice. She could exert her will over the reapers as she had in one of the most difficult decisions of her life; the time she'd chosen to re-write the geth heretics. She had never decided whether she had un-done the synthetic equivalent of brainwashing, or merely done the brainwashing herself. She hoped it wasn't the latter. Oh, perhaps controlling the reapers was merciful. She could simply send them away, and let their sentience continue after a brief interlude.

But it was hollow. It felt as though she would do nothing more than throw away her life to push back the grasping hand of her enemy, only to have it laugh as an adult does to a petulant child. It would merely wait until she was gone to continue as it always had. 

And then, the catalyst offered a third way. 

And that one left her coldest of all.

A "perfect solution". A chance to play goddess, to rewrite the universe with everything she was. Her friends, her principles, all intact. The pull of that drew her a few painful steps forward. The radiant green light crackled through the room, bathing her in its glow. The way to end the cycles, to end the destruction. With one more life, she could save everyone, organic and synthetic, by doing… something. Somehow.

And that was the fact that made her halt in her tracks. 

Magic. It was something a rigid synthetic might think would appeal to its organic enemy. Something packaged so nicely in the catalyst's logic, of a cycle that would always exist because organics and synthetics were separate things and could never coexist.

And yet EDI was her friend. And EDI loved Joker, for she had no other way to describe the way that EDI had changed her core self-protection routines to include his life. Or the way Legion had chosen to risk his people to avoid harming the Quarians, the way he had sacrificed himself for Geth and Quarians alike in the fastest consensus she had ever seen him make.

And in one small conversation she had held with EDI, lay the truth of what she was experiencing that moment.

_"EDI, you can lie?"_

She stared up at the glowing beam, then turned slowly and stared out at the darkness of space, punctuated by the hideous explosions erupting all around them. None of the paths were right. They were all altars on which an organic might sacrifice itself - after all, had a synthetic been here in her place it would not think that any of these options was an effective way of interacting with its opponent. 

She took a deep breath, shaking loose the tangled web of urgency, of loss and the trauma of the explosion. She sighed, feeling herself start to come back online. 

No. None of the paths made sense. All of them destroyed the relays, and by association, destroyed Earth and all her friends and allies. It was a matter of logistics, and as any military officer knew, there were certain things that were imperative, even tiny little things that, if neglected, made for games-enders. Limes. Wool socks. Comm satellites. 

Garrus, her love. Tali, her friend... all the quarians and turians, for that matter, would starve before enough labs to synthesize dextro-protiens could be rebuilt. The krogan would be unable to adapt to the human homeworld with such tight constraints in so short a time after so long at war. Earth would become a new battlefield between krogans and turians no matter the power of Wrex and Victus' leadership. 

How would any of their allies be all right? Their entire strategy and infrastructure was built on the extreme FTL of the relay networks. No relays meant they were just like the nearest pre-space civilization. Maybe with a leg up, like the asari had last time. But still. Back to square one. 

Just like the Reapers had always intended. 

"Have you made your choice?" it asked.

"I have some questions," she said.


	2. Parlay

It waited silently.

"Is that you?" she asked softly.

It gazed at her with narrowed eyes. She stared back at it.

When it became clear that she was not merely going to hurl herself into the stream, it relaxed its features again, back into that of a supposedly sweet child.

"Yes. That is where I exist. You may utilize your crucible's new option there. You may join with me by going into the light. By becoming one with the energy that runs throughout the galaxy."

Yes, she remembered her battle with the yahg Shadow Broker, Liara's predecessor. She remembered how the plasma had splashed down over his huge body, melting, erasing his very being into molecules.

Perhaps it was true, perhaps each of her molecules would disperse throughout the galaxy as it was shattered. Organic Chemistry. But then again, that was already true. Everything she was had once been part of the big bang. She could end the pain. Be something beautiful. 

A different big bang. 

But it wasn't real, she thought, It made no sense. Limping her weight from one foot to the other she turned to face the catalyst again, taking another step away from the beam. Both feet screamed in pain, and she settled for standing the one that felt less broken. The pain of survival, that was real. 

 

"How many cycles," she asked, "How many have you overseen?"

It gazed at her, as if contemplating. "Forty-two," it said.

She closed her eyes briefly. The scale of it was overwhelming. Forty two galactic civilizations, just erased. 

"Who are you?" 

"I am the catalyst," it said.

She shook her head, then regretted it when the world around her spun. She took a deep breath, steadying herself. 

"Yes, but who _are_ you?"

"I am the culmination of a synthetic species which was the first to lend itself to the cycle. Part of us remains in what you see today as reapers," it said.

"Are you sentient?" she asked.

For a moment she thought it might not answer.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry," she said gently, kneeling down in front of the avatar. 

It turned sharp eyes on her.

"I'm sorry that we forced our will on you to make you listen," she explained, pressing a blood-drenched hand tightly against the wound in her side. 

"That is irrelevant. That is the way it will always be between organics and synthetics," it replied, looking away dismissively. "The created will rebel against their creators. The creators will exert their will over their progeny."

She sighed, sliding from her knees onto her hip and carefully laying one broken foot out in front of her. 

"Yes, there will always be conflict between individuals, and between groups of individuals," she agreed, sucking in measured breaths. 

"But," she continued, "Have you ever considered that perhaps that our conflict has nothing to do with you being synthetic and me being organic?"

It whipped its gaze back to her, eyes narrowing.

"You reprogrammed me," it said. "You can't reprogram organics," it stated.

She stared at it. "No? What is it then when one organic tries to control another organic, force them to live by their constraints and beliefs? What about methods of torture and brainwashing? Isn't that basically the same thing?"

It avoided her question. "Simply further proof that organics cannot respect sentience. That they are chaos. The War will always exist. We bring order to preserve history, we end advanced organic civilizations before they can wage war further," it said then, sounding ever so slightly more defensive. 

"We are your salvation," it added, tritely.

"That's like murdering your children to protect them from the bad parts of their life. You preclude the good experiences, feelings of joy, of love. Of becoming more than an instinct to propagate. To grow sentient, and become more than a series of programs. To accomplish something. To have meaning."

It stared at her, without expression or reply.

Good. She had its attention.

"A friend of mine is synthetic. She's become a free sentient being during the time that I've known her, so I've been thinking a lot about these things lately," she began, gritting her teeth momentarily against the pain. "So far as I can tell, nothing sentient in this universe has a predetermined purpose."

Every inch of her body ached. Exhaustion dragged at her, trying to suck her down. But need kept her awake, kept her desperately trying to find the right words. 

What was it she had said to Dr. Chakwas and Engineer Adams? "Genetics don’t make us alive. It's our self awareness, curiosity, capacity to evolve. That's the very nature of sentience, of breaking free from your basic existence - regardless of your origin. If you aren't sentient, then you have limited purpose. There are plenty of beings out there who are nothing more than tools others use, food sources, work providers. It may not be fair, but that's true of synthetics and organics alike."

Its eyes narrowed again. 

"My friend EDI, the sentient synthetic? She told me that she has decided that her friends are worth more to her than her continued existence. She has surpassed her basic programming of self-preservation to become truly sentient, to become the arbiter of her own existence. She told me that things like courage, duty, and love had become the purpose of her existence."

"You see, this is what I don't understand. What is this cycle you're telling me about? The only cycle I see is of Reapers coming to destroy galactic civilization; organic and synthetic cultures alike. I don't understand this war between organic and synthetic. We're all machines; carbon or silicate," she said, recalling what Engineer Adams had said a few weeks earlier. "I'm half synthetic at this point. The geth have developed an organic neural model. Hell, I've even been interfaced with a geth server. I just don't see how we're different anymore."

She closed her eyes, catching her breath from the effort it took to speak so much. Slowly she lifted her head, looking over at the paths before her. 

"I don't see how any of those things fixes this coming and continuing war you speak of."

Her mind felt like it had tapped into that plasma stream. It was always like this when it came down to the wire. Thoughts rushed through her, potential options. This is what it felt like when she had to make those tough decisions. She felt alive, electric, wrapping her mind around the event-horizon edge of the flow of time, trying to comprehend the thing, the one idea, that would change someone's mind, that would give her the words to make a difference.

She stared back into the avatar's childlike face. It had gone completely blank, as though the processing power required to emote it was being allocated elsewhere.

She thought of the ones she was fighting for. All of the people in the galaxy. No. That was too much. Too many people to comprehend. But she could fight for the people she knew. The people she loved. She thought of the Normandy, of her crew. Her squad mates, her friends. She thought of Garrus, the love of her life. A battle-scarred, passionate, sarcastic misfit of a turian. A being who was so like her, yet so different from her that they were allergic to each other. 

And then, like a supernova, it hit. Her mind had caught the wave. Like every time before, she'd found it. The perspective, the intuition that led to hope. The fundamental truth of it was that there was no choice left to make. She was at the culmination of every decision she had ever made. Shepard and Vakarian. Joker and EDI, exploring the galaxy together. The quarians and the geth on Rannoch, rebuilding as one people. 

"The thing is," she said, incredulous at her own realization. "I don't need to fix anything. We've already done it."

"We're fine without your "solution"," she said sitting upright. "We've already broken the cycle - if there ever was one."

It stared at her, the faintest glimmers of what looked like fear mixing in its expression alongside contempt.

"Your organic nature is winning out. You wish to preserve yourself." it said.

She laughed, a wet coughing laugh.

"Oh, no. You see, I chose to make my life, my sentience one of sacrifice." She smiled to herself, "I'd like to come out alive if possible, sure. I'd like for all of us to come out alive," she said, looking back at the catalyst.

It sneered back at her.

"Here's the thing," she said, locking her elbow to take the strain off her abdomen. She sucked in a breath before continuing. "I don't think you're sentient," she said gently.

It's eyes widened. "Yes I am," it said, voice high with shock.

"Then the reapers aren't sentient," she countered.

"Of course they are," it replied.

She shook her head.

"If the reapers were sentient, and you were sentient," she said, grunting through another difficult breath, "how could you possibly reconcile your choice to enslave them to your will with what you've been telling me about the injustice of organics?"

She took a deep breath and asked intently, "How could you justify any of this?"

It hesitated, staring at her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the explosions grow steadily fewer. She dared not turn her head and draw attention to the change.

"They choose to serve this purpose," it said.

She looked at it, shaking her head.

"You're telling me that each of those beings out there has chosen this. Chosen to attack other sentient species - organic and synthetic alike - to enslave them. To re-program them into husks and monsters. To destroy their sentience and sacrifice themselves to pre-empt a war which may or may not come to pass."

She could feel the cybernetic dermal weave knitting the wound in her side. She sucked in a deep breath to continue her impassioned speech. 

"So rigid, so unbending they cannot even stop to question if what they do is right? That sounds like a simple program. Vast in scale, but an instinct, a non sentient pattern nonetheless." 

It hesitated again, staring at her.

"Yet you claim they are sentient. They are your puppets or they are your slaves. Either way it must be you who are controlling them. You have made indoctrinated slaves out of some of the most intricate beings I have ever met. You claim the greater purpose of order and freedom of organic rule. You create neither. You do nothing but perpetuate a hypocritical cycle with no thought to change."

She said these things with firmness, but no hatred.  
"That is not sentience," she said, expressing her sadness at that potential truth. 

And if it were true, all of it would be over. There would be nothing she could do in the face of this overwhelming power.

She moved her leg. The heavy bone weave had been doing its part to put her back together. Her breath sucked in now more easily.

She still had one more card up her shattered armored sleeve. The electric charge of hope surged through her. 

It was staring at her fervently.

"Unless," she said, looking at the avatar. "Unless you did the other thing that sentient beings are sometimes known to do."

It watched her face, frozen, hanging on her next word.

"Perhaps you made a mistake."

There was silence between them. It was looking down, pensive.

"The best part about being alive," she said carefully, "Is getting to make new choices. To do a little better than you did the day before."

"You have a choice. If you can believe that for just one minute, this war will be over."

 

There is silence. 

She stares out the windows at her home. There are fires burning, but there is less destruction than before. Perhaps she made a difference. 

"It is insufficient," it says. But this time she sees it is not the same. Something is different.

"We cannot reach them with these relayed words. They are too far gone in battle to listen to my voice. I am sorry."

She believes it. She hangs her head, and for the first time, tears of grief and frustration well up in her eyes. They spill over, splattering over the cold metal surface. The hole in her side is all but healed now. It does not matter.

There is silence.

 

She closes her eyes and stares into the darkness.


	3. Get up

The first thing he saw was nothing. 

For a moment, he wondered if this was what the afterlife was. Perhaps he would float here in no-space until someone called his spirit down for support. At least being part of Shepard's crew, being the foremost Turian consultant on Reapers there was a chance his afterlife would be filled with requests. At least for a few years anyway. 

But the afterlife shouldn't smell like fuel. Or blood.

Those were thing far too corporeal for a spirit.

He blinked his eyes, but darkness remained. Sounds began to emerge from the big gray fluffy ringing that he realized he had been hearing.

He tried to move his arm.

Pain. Excruciating pain shot up his body through his shoulder joint. Ah, yes. He was not dead then. He coughed, his right mandible ached the way it always did after he had been too close to an explosion.

Oh. Right. As usual.

There is a muffled screech and he finds himself pleased for once at his hiding place. _Let's see you try and find me here you mutated bitch_. He laughs. Another bad idea.

But then there is light. The screech is that of tearing metal. 

"Hah!" he hears a familiar voice bellow. "Turian. There are more enemies to kill."

He blinks his eyes until he sees the large hand of a Krogan waving in front of his face. He sees that the melted carcass of a MAKO has been levered off of him with the purple-blue glow of biotics. He sees Kaidan and Liara and a handful of human biotics. He sees a small tri-fingered hand reaching for him.

"It's _team_ dextro you Bosh'tet. Get up."

He drags himself sideways. His arm does not move. He doesn't care.

"Where is she?" he demands as soon as he has crawled to his knees.


	4. Synchronicity

"Unless," a voice says.

Her eyes snap open. 

"You give them your voice," it says.

"What do you mean?"

"You have done so before. Upload yourself into a consensus," it adds, staring at her through silver eyes and tilted head.

She looks at the console, frowns. "There?"

"No," it says, turning to look at the great beam. "There."

She looks at it in dismay, grief at her failure overwhelming her. After everything she had said, it was ready to feed her the same line. _Here organic, throw yourself into the pyre_.

"A signal from that source would be ignored," it says apologetically, gesturing at the console.

"They must hear you through me," it adds.

And yet.

It rings true. She remembers the geth dreadnought. Not just any terminal would do. The shutdown signal had to come from the source. The servers filled with reaper code. She had to go inside, to exist there in the consciousness of the geth to make a difference.

She had no more words left to convince the catalyst if it did not believe her yet. She looked at the windows. They had no more time for her to wait. She hadn't come all this way not to take a risk.

"How," she asks.

"Interface with my core," it replies, and in its hands is a glowing diagram, of a string surrounded by haze. 

She stares at the lethal waves of energy, then down at her fingers. She knows that the fingers in her left hand are not ordinary flesh and blood. Useful. She had not needed the holographic interface to her Omni-tool for some time now. She merely maintained the image - it was not something she was comfortable enough with to share, not in the wake of the suspicions of her friends. But perhaps Cerberus' meddling would now be her solution. 

But how to get there?

She laughs, low and soft, and then crawls to her knees. She rises to her feet, and steps forward. The cold blue steel to her left. The electric red relays to her right.

Mix blue and red and what do you get?

Not green.

She laughs.

Biotics glow around her body, a deep purple, fizzing and twisting, flashing in and out of visible spectrum. She stares at the white core center of the lethal green energy, concentrating harder than she ever has in her life. The biotic stream around her glows brighter and more solid. It becomes part of her. It is her shield, her skin, her life.

She can feel the heat, feel the electromagnetic pull of so much energy running in so fast a current. She steps forward, reaching out a purple-sheathed hand towards the horizon of green plasma.

She steps to the very edge of the platform. It was never meant to reach far, only just enough for some poor fool organic to hurl itself into the blaze.

She stretches her arm forward into the heat.

The migraine is beyond anything she has ever felt before. Blood is dripping from her nose, falling into the energy with a steaming hiss. Her arm remains intact, cleaving a line through the energy. It flows around her, river rapids over a stone. It is like standing at the base of Earth's Niagara falls, plasma rushing past her head with such power it is impossible to remember to breathe. The sound is all she can hear, static noise, river rapids thrashing. Her teeth vibrate. Her fingertips are millimeters from the core. She opens her biotic field to press them home.

The data threads running through her fingers jolt to a state of high power voltage. Her body locks into muscle spasms, brain gone white hot with the power of the upload.

Its minds are beyond anything she can fathom, she can barely see the smallest edge. There are no helpfully anthropomorphized platforms or paths this time, but something about it seems familiar. That which she cannot comprehend. 

She pours every piece of herself into the stream.

She feels a new consensus must be reached.

She feels ...


	5. Krant

Harbinger stumbles. All of the reapers have lost their balance. They pause, mid-motion.  
   
There is a sudden insane silence across the battlefield. Soldiers stare up in awe as the giants become statues.  
   
Then they lift into the air. Most of them.  
   
Others follow after a few moments' hesitation.  
   
Harbinger turns, focusing its primary forward arrays up into the sky, watching the other reapers abandon their places. It lets out a horrible noise, echoing through the valley.  
   
It is nearly silent in its wake, no fellows to echo its cry.  
   
Hot red lasers blast down at the earth beneath its feet.  
   
   
   
They look further down the valley at the reaper patrolling the transfer beam. It rages, crushing things nearby. No people remain there, not alive anyway. It crushes and burns nonetheless.  
   
Garrus methodically checks the veracity of his recovered rifle. He fires a clip into the ground, pops the heat sink, replaces it. Repeats. His arm hangs loose at his side but it does not make a difference. He has the rifle held securely in his other arm.  
   
Vega is giving orders to stragglers coming out of burning buildings, sending refugees to bunkers, soldiers into the nearby squad to make up numbers. Tali is programming her drone. Grunt is rifling through the remains of a munitions truck. He finds a rocket, grins. Kaidan is arguing with the captain of an infantry squad – what was left of it. He gestures to his squad of biotics. He is trying to convince them to go with the remnants of the infantry squad, to go back.   
“Our orders were to find you, sir,” the captain says.  
   
“Well you’ve found us. Now you can go back,” he replies.   
   
“Let’s go,” Garrus says after he clears the second clip.  
   
Liara nods silently and rises to go stand beside him. Tali is already there beside him. Grunt follows suit. Vega is not far behind.  
   
“Go where?” the infantry captain demands.  
   
Garrus ignores him and starts towards the massive blue beam that links the planet to the citadel. His eyes have only one focus. He does not stop to see who else comes with him. He knows who it will be.  
   
“We’re going in,” Kaidan says to the captain.  
   
"Major, getting close to that thing is suicide!" The captain says, waving vaguely at the remaining visible reaper. “Wait for an air strike. We’ve got to fall back.”  
   
Garrus merely continues his resolute pace towards the glowing beam. He does not duck for cover, or even try to disguise his approach from the reaper.  
   
"Sir, what are you doing?" the captain exclaims.  
   
"We are her Krant," Grunt said, as if that explains everything. And it does.  
   
Liara smiles apologetically at the captain. "Do what you feel is best for your men. We have our own mission," she said, and then turns to jog up to the turian.   
   
"Take them back Captain," Kaidan says softly, nodding to his soldiers, his students. Some of them look pissed, others grateful. The captain nods firmly, and marches back to the group. Kaidan turns and sets out at double-time to rejoin the others.  
   
Garrus leads them down the valley once more, past the hulking corpses of makeshift firetrucks and the corpses of their friends and comrades. They are going to where they belong. No matter what.


	6. Choices

He is too late to recover her from the citadel. When he sees her she is dragging herself upright in the blue glow of the transfer beam, standing shakily.  
   
Her arm is just - _gone_.   
   
The shoulderplate of her armor is burnt and melted into a twisted lump on her shoulder. She is moving forward, slow and steady. She looks at him. Her eyes are twisted and unfathomable depths. She looks too tired to move her facial features into anything resembling an expression, and he believes he is as well. They simply stare at each other for a long silent moment. Then he offers her his good arm, and she reaches out her remaining hand and grips it so tightly it's a wonder his armor does not crumble.   
   
"Where is it?"  
   
They stare at her in silence, in awe.  
   
"Where is Harbinger?" she demands.  
   
Garrus can't take his eyes off of her, so Liara points past them. "It is around that block. We do not know its trajectory."  
   
Shepard nods, and turns to begin her slow and steady march. She does not let go of Garrus' hand until the first time she nearly stumbles. Then she takes her hand back to find her balance, clenches it into a fist and heaves a deep breath. She marches forward. They follow.  
   
"HARBINGER!" she cries, voice echoing through shattered buildings and washing over the crackle of fire. She glows with a fierce blue-purple haze, radiating in wedge-shaped ripples out from her body.  
   
There is a terrible sound of reaper steps halting, and turning. Shepard moves so slowly that it makes no difference that she is moving in the face of that vastness. No. It makes all the difference in the galaxy.  
   
"HARBINGER, I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY TO YOU," She calls, marching ever forward.  
   
The reaper comes into view around the edge of what had been a skyscraper, emerging from night and smoke as a blackness wreathed in red. It is so tall it is hard to fathom, and in one step it closes half the distance.  
   
Shepard reaches forward awkwardly unbalanced for the hood of a wrecked truck. She levers herself onto it, putting her hip on the warped metal, then a knee, and then she is standing. The maneuver is repeated and then she is standing on its scorched back. She stands on this tiny ledge, glaring skyward.  
   
With one more step the reaper stands over her, blazing red lights glaring down at her.

" **WE ARE HARBINGER** ," it says, voice deep and echoing around them. The vibrations stir the air and rattle loose hair and clothing.  
   
"You are wrong," Shepard responds, voice rough with anger, with determination.   
   
For once, the reaper has nothing to say. It does not begin its usual mocking litany about pain and fear. It stands there, gazing at her. Her hair is singed and blowing about her face in the wind. Her face is streaked with blood, some of it fresh trickling from her nose, her ears.  
   
" **WE ARE YOUR SALVATION** ,"  
   
"BULLSHIT," She bellows. The waves of sound coming off of her seem somehow just as powerful. The reaper jerks back, touches a leg down twice as if uncertain of its placement. The biotic glow around her body writhes and snaps, flashes of green exploding in tiny pockets as it expands her voice to fill the valley. A building nearby starts a cascading collapse at this further instability.  
   
"You're just a soldier lost in a war that has left you behind. You have no mission. There's no purpose for you here," she calls up at it. Smoke whirls in the face of her waves of sound.  
   
It remains silent, forward arrays locked onto her little human form. She stares up, tiny human body standing firm in the face of chaos.  
   
"You heard the consensus. I have given you choice."  
   
They watch her, silent, unfathoming. Believing.   
   
"Now,” she shouts, voice powerful and unbending, “I give you a choice.” She glares upwards, pausing, giving the full weight of her soul to the words she is about to speak.  
   
“Get off my planet, or die."   
   
" **WE ARE HARBINGER** ," it says again, less certain this time.  
   
"You are sentient," she responds. "Make your damn choice."  
   
It hesitates, staring at her. She growls at it, then spreads her feet slightly, bending her knees and throwing back her shoulders. The glow around her sparks and snaps, purple and green interweaving, rolling into a sphere around her. The energies spin and writhe, spitting and hissing.   
   
"NOW," She demands, throwing her head up. The echo of her voice shakes buildings.   
   
And then, with the silent grace of the reapers, it lifts, flowing upwards into the night. Its shutters collapse over its forward array and the beams of light disappear. Soon it is an indeterminate blot intermingling with the smoke and occluding the lights in the night sky.  
   
The glow around Shepard fades, wobbles, and thrumms out of existence. She sags slowly to her knees, then topples to her side. A dozen hands lift her down from the truck. Strong arms enfold her and begin to carry her back up the hill.   
 

He does not let go of her hand until the doctors pry them from each other.


End file.
